The Future in Catastrophic Times
Photograph by Marco Verch / CC We all knew summer would arrive, whether or not we’d be allowed outside to enjoy it. And indeed, here in New York, refrigerated trucks holding dead bodies are gone and long, warm Spring evenings have arrived. We’ve been through hell already. Aren’t we allowed some sunshine?
Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a moment when science isn’t quite enough to say. When will it be safe to re-open? How many tests do we need? Which states are getting the balance between social distancing and people’s mental health right? The only truthful answer, one that has united just about everyone with scientific or medical training, does not calm anyone’s anxieties: We don’t know. The science is necessary, but not sufficient. It doesn’t offer the certainty we seem to need to calm our collective nerves. It’s in moments like this that I turn my training as a scientist off, and let myself be calmed and guided by the queer forebears I imagine myself related to.
José Esteban Muñoz was a Cuban American scholar of queer studies before he died in 2013 at only 46. He mentored a generation of queer scholars, many of them people of color, including two friends of mine whose work I adore. He was still teaching at NYU when he left this world, just as I took a job as a postdoc there. He wrote two books, and , the
